Beyond Clientelism: Neighbourhood Leaders on a Philippine Island

In coastal neighbourhoods just north of Dumaguete City on Negros Island, the pressures of ‘modernity’ have encouraged low-income groups—many of them fishing families—to establish and maintain larger kin-based residential clusters. While clientelism has a strong presence in the wider Philippine polity and is easily observed at the local level during elections, this article questions the view that neighbourhood leaders establish power and authority largely by attaching themselves to patrons, bosses, and governing elites. To elaborate on the nature of these leaders' independence from clientelism, the article engages studies of everyday politics and related literature which demonstrates that ordinary people in Southeast Asia—peasants, landless workers, the urban poor—are not captives of the discourses and practices of elites. In addition to the wealth and class dimensions highlighted in the everyday politics literature, it shows how kinship factors and settler status are relevant for understanding how low-income groups mobilise power on their own and establish neighbourhood leadership in the lowland Philippines.